Atmospheric river damage cleanup continues in Port Coquitlam

Some residents in Port Coquitlam are still dealing with property damage from last weekend’s atmospheric river.

“I’m angry there was nothing done to mitigate it because it was a foreseeable problem,” said Matthew Acheson, a resident of the city.

Acheson is left frustrated as he cleans up what is left of his home. He says between two to three feet of water flooded through his property situated on Coast Meridian Road. This is the second devastating flood event he has experienced in the 25 years he and his family have lived there.

His basement was the site of his partner’s thriving daycare and now it is on hold after 10 years of operation, waiting for the repairs.

“It is completely gutted. It’s full of mud. We are trying to get the moisture out of the walls and we are looking to demolish the fresh repairs that were done 4 years ago,” Acheson said.

He lives near Hyde Creek and says the nearby culvert is too small to deal with large amounts of stormwater.

“Is it viable for us to be here? Who would buy this house? If we sell this house we are going to take a massive loss and if we stay here we are going to go through this again,” Acheson said.

The City of Port Coquitlam says over the weekend it received over 40 service calls for flooding, and five families have registered for Emergency Support Services.

The city’s mayor Brad West says it has been diligently upgrading infrastructure over the years and the city will be conducting a comprehensive review. He says most of the infrastructure in place should be able to deal with most water events.

“This was a very unique in both the volume and velocity,” the mayor said. “We have two pump stations that will be upgraded over the next two years those are about 30 million dollars in investments.”

Acheson says regardless of the infrastructure upgrades his property is effectively doomed because it’s located at the bottom of Burke Mountain.

“If you put houses where there used to be trees the streams down streams are going to spike whenever there is a rain event because water runs off houses faster than it runs off trees.”

Acheson says insurance won’t cover the full extent of the damage, and he will have to foot the bill to make his home habitable.